x INTRODUCTION. 
“ They pour an answering strain, that never 
Could be awoke by minstrel skill.” 
Letitia Landon, in “ The Poetess/’ while tell 
ing the “ History of the Lyre,” exclaims— 
“ The flowers were full of song: upon the rose 
I read the crimson annals of true love 
The violet flung me back an old romance; 
All were associated with some link 
Whose fine electric throb was in the mind.” 
Tennyson, in his ever-questioning philosophy, 
may ask, 
“ Oh, to what uses shall be put 
The wild weed flower that simply blows? 
And is there any moral shut 
Within the bosom of the rose ?” 
But he at once answers his own doubt by add 
ing that 
“Any man that walks the mead, 
In bird, or blade, or bloom, may find— 
According as his humors lead— 
A meaning suited to his mind.” 
This love of florigraphy is plainly one of 
those natural touches which make all the world 
akin—one of those binding links whose origin 
we cannot detect, and whose effects only we can 
perceive. Here we may exclaim with Eliza 
Cook: 
